1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of providing a routing protocol in a sensor network, and more particularly, to a method of providing a routing protocol in a sensor network, in which lifetime of sensors can be considered to the maximum by using the routing protocol considering to an energy efficiency in the sensor network, and energy can be regularly used at all sensor nodes to long maintain a lifetime of an entire network.
2. Description of the Related Art
A technical field of the present invention is a routing protocol that is a kernel of a sensor network. The sensor network has a self-computation capability and it is comprised of a plurality of nodes having the sensors, which can communicate with other nodes.
Each of the nodes constructing the sensor network can collect information, such as temperature, air pressure, humidity and the like by using the sensor installed at the nodes and it can self-analyze information, which is obtained from the sensor, through the self-computation capability.
Further, several nodes of the sensor network can collect the analyzed result as well as the unprocessed result obtained from the sensor, through a communication of each of the sensor nodes. Additionally, each of the nodes can collect information in a fixed position and also have a mobility depending on a rapid change of environment.
Accordingly, the sensor network requires a sensor and communication equipment for collecting data and communicating with other nodes, the routing protocol for assisting the communication with the sensor node, and the appliance for analyzing information obtained from the sensor.
Since the sensor network has so many similarities with an Ad Hoc network, which performs a mobility management and a peer-to-peer communication, a routing protocol technology for the mobility management and the data transmission path of the sensor network succeeds the Ad Hoc network.
The routing protocol of the Ad Hoc network is mainly classified into a proactive routing protocol and a reactive routing protocol. In the proactive routing protocol, a routing information is updated according to a periodical message transmission and reception between nodes, thereby providing the routing information of all nodes. In the reactive routing protocol, the routing information of up to the destination node is provided according to the request at the data transmission. The above two methods have their advantages and disadvantages.
Since an origin node always has the routing information of the destination node in the proactive routing protocol, a fast data transmission can be achieved according to the routing information at the data transmission.
However, since many nodes should always maintain the routing information in the proactive routing protocol, the nodes require many memories and much load are burdened on the nodes according to the message transmission between the nodes so as to always maintain the latest information.
On the contrary, the reactive routing protocol requires the routing information only at the data transmission, so that a little delay may occur at an initial time of data transmission. However, much load is not burdened on each node. If considering the limits to the sensor network in two routing ways, the reactive routing protocol is judged to be more suitable in view of the load burdened on the sensor node.
The proactive routing protocol includes Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV), Cluster-Gateway Switching Router (CGSR), Wireless Routing Protocol (WRP) and the like, and the reactive routing protocol includes Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV), Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), Associativity-Based Routing (ABR) and the like.
The sensor network of the present invention has different characteristics from 802.11 wireless LAN for interfacing with a given network through an access point and from the Ad Hoc network for performing a peer-to-peer communication between nodes independently of a given infrastructure.
Each of the sensor nodes must be comprised of minimal simplified elements. Accordingly, it should have a limited power and storage unit and a simple communication capability of not burdening much load on the node. Further, since the sensor nodes have the frequent variation of topology depending on an environmental influence, the sensor nodes require a fast reconstruction of the topology.